Proposed Changes to Social Security: An Analysis

Some 48 million Americans are expected to collect around $518 billion in Social Security benefits during 2005.  Of these, about 70 percent are retired workers.  The ratio of workers covered by Social Security to retirees is approximately three to one but will decrease to about two to one in the next generation.  Furthermore, at present, there are significantly more Social Security taxes collected than benefits paid; the excess is spent to help fund other government programs.  With the Baby Boomers starting to collect benefits in 2008 and large federal deficits already threatening to push interest rates higher, providing for future Social Security funding is being addressed.  This paper explores existing and future demands expected to be placed on Social Security and possible changes that may be implemented to ensure its long-term viability

Senior Citizens, Social Security, And Healthcare Costs

Based on an extensive literature review this paper discusses the interrelationships among the increasing numbers of Senior Citizens and the costs of Social Security and healthcare. This discussion includes information on Social Security pertaining to its funding and the Social Security Trust Funds. The paper notes that both the costs of Social Security and healthcare are directly related to improving healthcare. The ongoing improvements in healthcare result in increasing numbers of Senior Citizens who demand further improvements in healthcare. This leads to increases in longevity adding to healthcare and Social Security costs. Finally, the paper demonstrates the underlying complexities and the lack of consensus of possible changes to improve healthcare

Adverse Changes In Faculty Behavior Resulting From Use Of Student Evaluations Of Teaching: A Case Study

Based on a detailed literature review and longitudinal analysis, this paper explores the possible underlying causes of the decline in the number of hours per week graduating business seniors indicated they studied during their senior year. The study was conducted at an AACSB accredited college of business at a regional university.  The study indicates that the decline in hours studied was likely an unintended result of using a process designed to demonstrate continuous improvement in teaching. The process utilized the Educational Testing Service’s SIR II student evaluation instrument as the only measure of teaching quality/effectiveness. The study concludes that the process may have pressured some instructors to sacrifice teaching rigor in an attempt to obtain more favorable student evaluations, thereby precipitating the decline in hours studied

Reducing The Downside Risk Of Not Receiving Anticipated Social Security Benefits By Using Personal Accounts

The government is not obligated to pay Social Security benefits and no one has the right to receive such benefits.  This paper presents the argument that opting for a personal account in conjunction with traditional Social Security is less risky than opting to have all of ones Social Security taxes go into traditional Social Security.  The overall downside risk of receiving lower than anticipated Social Security retirement income is reduced by diversifying to include personal accounts along with traditional Social Security.&nbsp

Adding Value To The First-Year Experience: Embedding Self And Major Exploration In The College Of Business Curriculum

This paper details the First-Year Career Development Program (First-Year Program) a component of a comprehensive multi-year program designed to guide business students through self-assessment and the selection of an appropriate business major and ultimately to prepare them to secure professional career positions. The First-Year Program is designed to integrate student self-assessment and career and business major exploration into the First-Year Experience. A survey of students who participated in the First-Year Program indicated a high level of student satisfaction. It further indicated that participants were more positive about completing their degree programs at the regional university where the First-Year Program is conducted. The First-Year Program was developed collaboratively by Career and Academic Planning Center professionals and College of Business faculty

Using Sequential Two-Part Focus Groups As A Supplemental Instrument For Student Course Evaluations

This paper describes the use of a sequential two-part focus group program designed to be a supplemental instrument for eliciting student suggestions to improve the teaching/learning process.   The sequential two-part focus group program provides students with two opportunities to provide feedback and have that feedback both noted and mirrored back to them. Many of the student comments and suggestions elicited during the focus group sessions were positive and constructive.  Moreover, use of the sequential two-part focus group program resulted in statistically significant improvement in student evaluations in all but one of the seven major sections of the Educational Testing Service’s SIR II, the primary instrument utilized to obtain the student course evaluations.  The “Overall Evaluation” of the course, wherein students are asked to, “Rate the quality of instruction in this course as it contributed to your learning,” improved most significantly.&nbsp

Using Standardized Student Evaluation Instruments To Measure Teaching Effectiveness In Lecture/Recitation Mode Classes

This paper investigates the variability of student teaching effectiveness survey evaluations among the various recitation sections when lecture/recitation instruction is utilized with the same instructor both delivering the lecture and teaching all of the corresponding recitation sections.  The research results indicate that when an instructor teaches multiple sections using lecture/recitation instruction, then the meaningful measure of the instructor’s teaching is the average of the student ratings for the various recitation sections. This study focuses on the variability of the students’ responses to each item in the survey instrument as measured by its standard deviation

Genome-wide association of multiple complex traits in outbred mice by ultra-low-coverage sequencing

Two bottlenecks impeding the genetic analysis of complex traits in rodents are access to mapping populations able to deliver gene-level mapping resolution and the need for population-specific genotyping arrays and haplotype reference panels. Here we combine low-coverage (0.15×) sequencing with a new method to impute the ancestral haplotype space in 1,887 commercially available outbred mice. We mapped 156 unique quantitative trait loci for 92 phenotypes at a 5% false discovery rate. Gene-level mapping resolution was achieved at about one-fifth of the loci, implicating Unc13c and Pgc1a at loci for the quality of sleep, Adarb2 for home cage activity, Rtkn2 for intensity of reaction to startle, Bmp2 for wound healing, Il15 and Id2 for several T cell measures and Prkca for bone mineral content. These findings have implications for diverse areas of mammalian biology and demonstrate how genome-wide association studies can be extended via low-coverage sequencing to species with highly recombinant outbred populations

Characterization of the Morphometry of Impact Craters Hosting Polar Deposits in Mercury's North Polar Region

Earth-based radar images dating back two decades show that the floors of some polar craters on Mercury host radar-bright deposits that have been proposed to consist of frozen volatiles. Several hypotheses have been put forth to explain their source, including volcanic outgassing, chemical sputtering, and deposition of exogenous water ice. Calculations show that volatiles are thermally stable in permanently shadowed areas. An earlier study of the depths of north polar craters determined with photoclinometric techniques applied to Mariner 10 images yielded the conclusion that the mean ratio of crater depth d to rim-crest diameter D for craters hosting polar deposits is two-thirds that of the mean ratio for a comparable population of neighboring craters lacking such deposits. This result could be explained by (though doesn't require) the presence of a thick layer of volatiles within the polar deposit-hosting craters. Here we use altimetric profiles and topographic maps obtained by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) to revisit this analysis. MLA is an instrument on the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011. MLA transmits a 1064-nm laser pulse at 8 Hz during MESSENGER's trajectory over Mercury s surface. The MLA illuminates surface areas averaging between 15 m and 100 m in diameter, spaced approx 400 m apart along the spacecraft ground track. The radial precision of individual measurements is <1 m, and the current accuracy with respect to Mercury s center of mass is better than 20 m. As of mid-December 2011, MLA coverage had reached to 15 S and has yielded a comprehensive map of the topography of Mercury s northern hemisphere. The MLA data are used here to quantify the shapes of craters in the north polar region and to avoid the shadowing bias of photoclinometric techniques